@newazurill
lol, sorry for the long rant the other day. Since I have pretty bad taste in anime, I've had some abrasive encounters in the anime community that have left me a little thin skinned and short tempered at times. I also made some false assumptions and accusations which were completely unjustified and immature on my part.
Elfen Lied was sort of popular at one time. It was always polarizing, so even when it was popular about half the people who watched it, absolutely hated it. That made it a "cult" show of sorts, so everyone felt like they had to check it out. Since around 2011, public opinion has changed drastically. Elfen Lied is an extinct fandom. Something so universally reviled that its only remaining fans are frequently called retards and are basically the "untouchables" of the anime community. Sort of like the band Creed in the music community.
Obviously your own experience and take away from the show isn't going to change, but I thought I would mention a couple things.
1. Yuka is indeed awful. In the manga, she was the generic tsundere love interest. Kouta is destined from the very beginning to end up with Yuka and they have a child at the end. The anime director disliked Yuka as a character, so he demoted her to a side character. However, she's still there because she was in the manga and it would be weird to completely write her out. Cousin marriage is actually still relatively common in Japan and isn't looked down upon. Especially not 20 years ago when this was made. That's not actually an example of what Japan considers incest fetish.
2. Bando is an idiotic, hot tempered soldier who gets fired from the military and becomes a vigilante. His functional purpose is as a comic relief villain, basically like Adon Corborlwitz from Berserk. He doesn't have conclusive character arc because there wasn't time.
3. Lucy is meant to operate as an anti-hero. She was driven over the edge as a child and happened to possess psychic powers. She commits horrible deeds, but then realized the gravity of her crimes and started to hallucinate from the stress. She wished to die if she couldn't stop herself and wanted to make a new start, but flew into a blind rage after she falsely assumed Kouta has betrayed her. In the OVA she spends 5 years not killing anyone and lived on the run with another girl who had killed her drunken stepfather in self defense. Lucy was going to turn herself in to take the fall for her friend, but the mutant research agency launched their capture attempt and killed Lucy's friend because they assumed she was another mutant. Lucy vowed revenge against Kurama who led the capture operation and swore that she would one day kill someone close to him and make him feel her pain. That's why she didn't kill Kurama in episode 1. The audience is supposed to gradually warm to Lucy and cheer for her to find redemption. With only 13 episodes though, this is asking a lot.
4. Kouta is kindhearted to a fault and also a little dull. As a result, he frequently makes decisions that most people wouldn't. He pathologically blames himself sub-consciously for his sister's death and tries to protect any girls he feels may in danger. For the record, taking Nyuu home was Yuka's idea when Kouta wanted to take her to the hospital. However, it was only to get her properly dressed and spare her family from shame. When the police started asking odd questions and seemed so desperate to find Nyuu when they wouldn't normally go door to door to ask about a missing girl, Kouta assumed Nyuu was in some kind of trouble and his protection instincts kicked in. After the police refused to believe his story about Bando attacking him, Kouta sided against the police and wanted to allow Nyuu to hide out at his place.
When Lucy spared Bando the 2nd time, it was meant to show a small step forward for her character. She didn't kill him because she didn't need to. She killed those other soldiers to protect Kouta, whom she values above herself and all others. As for that secretary that Kakuzawa Sr. shot...this is another pacing issue. She's actually not a secretary. She was the research assistant of Kakuzawa Jr. but was actually the brains behind genetic research into the Diclonius mutation. Kakuzawa Sr. wanted to scare her and assure absolute loyalty, because he actually needed her research for his plan. He wanted to force her to create a mutagen bomb that would spread the mutation on a massive scale. That's why Lucy said she could make a diclonius world if she had sided with Kakuzawa, but she chose humanity over her fellow mutants because of Kouta. A lot of this is in the manga and the anime just didn't have time. Do you see what I mean when I say pacing is this show's biggest problem? It needed way more than 13 episodes to work ideally.
The manga is an ecchi and fully embraces that. The anime director wanted to take the show in a far more serious direction, but some of the manga's ecchi like the pee scene in episode 1 made it into the anime. While the show features underage nudity, it's typically not done in a sexual way. I don't think the show caters to loli fetishists because I've met plenty of those guys on MAL and they don't even like Elfen Lied.
Anyways, it's still a ridiculous anime but I hope that clears up maybe a few questions.
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